


Regrets and Failure

by pknote



Category: DCU (Comics), Impulse (Comics)
Genre: Angst, During Thad's petrification, Fluff, Gen, mind scape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13190085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pknote/pseuds/pknote
Summary: During Inertia's time as a display in the Flash Museum he has more than enough time to think.





	Regrets and Failure

**Author's Note:**

> So I found that there's not enough brotherly stuff with Thad and Bart, and decided, "Hey let's write some"  
> So threw around an idea with my friend, and a couple hours later. We got this.  
> Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Italics is for thought/in mind speak, Bold is just emphasis

“ **Powerless**. That’s how-” He spluttered out a cough, getting weaker and weaker with every step. “-That’s how-- we were able-- to nail him--” His speech was getting slower, harder, more bitter with each word. “And y’know what…?” A long pause as he made eye contact with his captor, not hesitating on a single word to follow.

“He screamed like a little bitch!”

That was it, after that. The speed force having been sapped from the boy completely, body growing stiff, almost frozen in time. But not exactly, Time always moved slow for him, speed, timelines, they were easy to manipulate, understand.

But this, this hurt like hell. His brain moved at thousands of miles per hour, while his body was frozen like ice. A single tear would take a decade to grow but only a second to fall.

And there he was stuck, placed on display, facing a effigy of the boy he killed, stuck forever in time, never to finish the step he had begun to take before the Flash took it away.

Both his name and the dumb code name He made for him, on display for all to see.

For all to spit, and scowl at him, for some deeds that now. Can never be forgiven.

The enemy of Bart Allen. Frozen in time by Wally West. Forever reaching for the enemy he killed. And never got to call foe, friend…

“Brothers.”

*****

Inertia’s eyes had to refocus, it must have took an hour to do so. Seeing  the statue he had been forced to stare at for the past couple years move.

 _Brothers?_ His thoughts echoed around, knowing he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move… Never again.

“That’s what we are aren’t we?”

There the speaking was again, It had to be nearing Midnight, no one would be in the museum. No one would be hearing his thoughts.

“Kon was saying, that we were like brothers? Like Tim and Jason, hating each other, but brothers all the same.”

The voice was familiar, but it couldn’t be, He was dead, He was why he was here in the first place.

“Thad, Comeon!” The voice finally took form, not in his halted vision but in his mind, a place where he could move freely, talk at his own accord.

“ _You’re dead.”_ It was a simple statement, but to Thad’s surprise, not filled with hate, but curiosity.

“So what if I am. As far as anyone knows, so are you.” The form zipped around him, stopping in front of his face, and grabbing hold of his outstretched hand. “So can’t we be dead, together?” The boy gave a grin, red gloved hands, holding green. Freeing the paralyzed hands from their cold prison. His feet touching the ground for the first time in god knows how many years.

 _“Allen.”_ The words spoke were coated in relief.

“I’ve always seen you as a brother, Max saw you as a son.”

_“I don’t deserve that.. I killed you.”_

“Years ago.”

 _“I KILLED YOU, BART!”_  Thad snapped, looking at his hands, holding them out in front of him. Both them and the figure behind them flashing red with blood.

“And I forgive you!” The smile on the brunette’s face was unreal.

_“You’re too quick to forgive”_

“I’m quick with everything, Bro.” The teen laughed, running his hands through his long brown hair. “We have the same face, therefore I can’t be mad at you without being mad at myself!” He took the blond’s face in his hands.

_“Then maybe it’s time to slow down.”_

“Or maybe you need to speed up!” Bart exclaimed, “That’s why you can’t move, Thad! You can’t forgive yourself! You’re living in the past, and the past is soooooo slooooow” Once again the teen went zipping around, Thad watching but staying stagnant in his spot. Standing on that pedestal, surrounded by white, and a circle of red and yellow lighting speeding around him.

 _“If I move on, Allen. It means I killed you for nothing. I was made to replace you, to end the feud between our grandfathers!”_ Tears began to well at normal speed in his eyes.

“You didn’t kill me.” the lightning reflecting Bart’s red suit stopped at an info panel, appearing next to Thad’s pedestal. “My name was meant to be a warning… I’m Impulsive, move too fast for my brain to keep up.” He laughed once again, “But you, you think things through.”

_“Yes, we’re exact opposites.”_

“I don’t think we are.”

The white world around them changed to the museum once again, Inertia standing in front of himself, his own body, with Impulse, Bart, standing at his effigy.

“As I do something you were made to do nothing, correct?”

_“I assume so.”_

“While I grew extremely quick, you grew extremely slow, correct?”

_“Get to your point, Allen.”_

“You’re an Allen, I’m a Thawne.” At some point they had switched places, not facing one another.

_“You’ve got that backwards.”_

“Do I?” Brown eyes were meeting Yellow, now. A grin on the face of the red clad hero. “Because I’m pretty sure that we’re two sides of a coin. I’ve got your face, you’ve got mine!”

_“That’s not how it works.”_

“I’m your enemy, you’re mine!” Thad looked down, refusing to look at the statue of the boy who never made any sense.

_“If you’re trying to make me forgive myself for killing you, it’s not going to work.”_

“Don’t you get it, Thad?”

_“No. You don’t make any damn sense, Allen!”_

“We’re opposites, yes. But we’re also the same. Two sides of the same coin. You’re Thaddeus, I’m Bartholomew. An Allen and a Thawne, both of us.” A cheesy smile grew on his face.

Thad finally getting it, began to laugh. “We’re brothers.”

_“Brothers.”_

“Thank you, Bart.”

_“Always. But hey, Thad?”_

“What is it, Bart.”

_“I think all you needed was an external force to change you.”_

“What are you talking about.” Thad looked confused up at the statue, seeing Bart begin to prepare to run.

_“Inertia… All you needed to change states of matter was an external force.”_

“Inertia and Impulse.”

 _“Yeah. Inertia.”_ The boy stretched his legs.

“Since when did you know anything about physics?” Thad asked, wiping the tears from under his goggles.

Bart grew quiet. _“Since you needed someone to convince you to forgive yourself.”_ He let out a sigh, reeling back before speeding forward.

Stopping.

Suspended in time.

A stone statue.

_Since you chose that it needed to be me that taught you how._

*****

He hit the ground, pedestal shattering.

Fire.

Smoke.

Water.

Groaning he began to move, seeing the shattered statue.

“He’s moving!”

Not Him.

“Christ, He’s awake.”

He could breathe again, move again.

Words, words echoed, words didn’t matter.

“The Flash slowed my body down, but not my mind. I was frozen but I could think.” He spoke, staring down at the broken effigy of Him “I could think **fast**.”

“And do you know what I thought about?”

 

_Him._


End file.
